In rural areas worldwide, residents
of remote villages are often left stranded when a medical
emergency arises. Without ambulances to transport them,
thousands of people, including children, die each year
in their attempt to reach medical help. Indeed, development
efforts often fail because the distribution component is
neglected. Too often, food supplies, new drugs, vaccines
and other critical health products fail to reach their
destination.
Riders for Health (RfH), a UK-based
organization founded by former motorcycle racer Andrea
Coleman and her husband, journalist Barry Coleman, offers
an innovative solution to assist developing countries in
their need for reliable transport. A member of the Make
Poverty History campaign, the organization has worked for
over 15 years on creating solutions for health care delivery
in Africa.
From
2002 to 2003, Riders for Health enabled African health
workers to reach 9.79 million people.
RfH's mission statement is two-fold: To provide
motorbikes, which are ideal for Africa's rugged roads and
terrain; and to help health care providers keep their vehicles
operating in places where there are almost no spare parts
or service stations. To do this, the organization equips
health care workers with motorcycles, trains them in off-road
riding, and supplies the parts, maintenance, and fuel for
the bikes.
"The people of Africa are dying of easily-preventable
diseases," co-founder Andrea Coleman said in a statement
to the Global Health Council. "It's no wonder the average
life expectancy has dropped below 40 years. Does this desperate,
scandalous situation prevail because the global health community
does not know how to prevent these diseases? No. It's because
rural communities cannot be reached on a reliable and predictable
basis."
The organization works closely with ministries
of health, UN agencies and NGOs, and their trained riders
are all nationals of the countries in which they work.
According to Riders for Health, the movement
started when people within the professional motorcycle racing
community began fundraising for children in developing countries.
During this time, Andrea Coleman was the public relations
manager for professional motorcycle champion Randy Mamola,
and in the late 1980s the two went to Somalia on behalf of
the Save the Children foundation.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Coleman
recalls how she saw pregnant women being taken to the hospital
in wheelbarrows because there was no other means of transport.
She also noticed a "graveyard" of abandoned motorcycles
that had been discarded because drivers didn’t know
how to maintain or repair them.
The Somalia trip spurred Mamola and the Colemans
to create a fleet of trained riders, and over the following
years the three set up successful pilot programs in Uganda
and Gambia. According to Time Magazine, in Lesotho they built
a fleet of 47 bikes that delivered health care services from
1991 to 1996 without a breakdown.
By 1996, the Colemans had formed Riders for
Health as an independent organization. Soon after, they expanded
into Ghana and Zimbabwe, where they created the Uhuru,
a motorcycle-and-sidecar combination that serves as a mini-ambulance,
and is often used to transport women in labour.
RfH Zimbabwe now runs almost 1,000 vehicles,
mainly motorcycles, for Zimbabwe's health ministry and for
non-government organisations, including one helping Aids
orphans and another engaged in rural housing.
More recently, the organization expanded into
Gambia and Nigeria, and in 2002 the Gambian government made
a historical move by outsourcing the management of the entire
country's health delivery vehicles – including refrigerated
trucks, minivans and ambulances - to Riders for Health.
A
donation of just 9 dollars ensures that a health
worker can reach 80 people in remote areas of Africa
for a whole year, according to Riders for Health.
Massive
Change
RfH has brought massive change to the infrastructure of healthcare in Gambia,
Zimbabwe, and Nigeria. With the use of a motorcycle, health and other aid workers
have increased their number of visits to remote communities by at least 300
percent. A single health care worker in Zimbabwe, for example, can serve up
to 20,000 people within their region.
The ground-breaking development work of Riders for Health
has been recognized by the Global Health Council, which named
the British-based NGO as the 2005 recipient of its award
for Best Practices in Global Health.
Time Magazine named both Andrea and Barry Coleman "Heroes
of Global Health" in the same year.
As confirmed by an independent report carried out in 2005,
11 million people are receiving regular, reliable healthcare
thanks to the organization. In one district in Zimbabwe,
death rates from Malaria decreased by 20 percent after health
workers were equipped with motorcycles and could cover 96
percent of the district with preventive services, mosquito
nets and anti-malarial drugs.
Health workers report that they are able to spend more time
in each community, and that people are benefiting from additional
heath education, HIV/AIDS counseling, and home-based care.
Workers also note that they are able to react much more quickly
to outbreaks of disease, including malaria, TB, diarrhea,
cholera, typhoid and anthrax.
Riders for Health is currently seeking large-scale funding
so that they can operate throughout the African continent.
For further information
on Riders for Health:
http://www.riders.org
http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/900/proj825p.html
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